top 20 medical website design mistakes

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marketing group Medical Marketing DNA™ TM healthcaremarketinggroup.com 800-258-0702 MEDICAL WEBSITE Design Mistakes Top 20

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Page 1: Top 20 Medical Website Design Mistakes

marketing groupMedical Marketing DNA™

TM

healthcaremarketinggroup.com

800-258-0702

MEDICAL WEBSITEDesign Mistakes

Top 20

Page 2: Top 20 Medical Website Design Mistakes

If you have a website, then you might be making one or more of the most common medical website design mistakes. Whether you are new to Internet marketing or you have been doing it for years, scan through this list to find out if you are committing any of these faux pas:

1. Poor Readability. If you are using a white font on a pastel background, or a black font on a dark background, your readers are likely to get frustrated and click off of your site fairly quickly. The same would apply to using a difficult-to-read font or making your text too small.

2. Walls of Text. You need to incorporate plenty of white space on your website to promote scannability. Today’s readers have short attention spans and don’t want to muddle through difficult material. Make liberal use of headings, bullet points, and other formatting tools.

3. Auto-play Music or Videos. Just don’t do it. Patients using older operating systems might have glitches, and the ones who are up-to-date don’t want to deal. If you must have music or videos on your site, make them accessible with a “play” button.

4. Hidden Contact Information. Your patients want to know where you’re located, what your phone number is, and how to get in touch with you through email or your website. Make sure this info is prominently displayed.

5. No Search Bar. It’s frustrating to go to a site and be unable to find information that you know you’ve seen on the site before. A simple search bar at the top of the home page can eliminate this type of annoyance. This is particularly important if you have a medical blog with valuable information that someone might want to refer back to later.

800-258-0702

healthcaremarketinggroup.com

Page 3: Top 20 Medical Website Design Mistakes

6. Inconsistent Design. Your medical website should have a similar background and style on every page; you don’t want your potential patients to think that they’ve been transferred to a different site due to stylistic inconsistency.

7. Flashing Things. If you have animated or flashing graphics (or worse, text) on your medical website, there’s a 99% chance that it looks unprofessional. It can also slow down operating systems and confuse your readers.

8. Unclear Purpose. As a medical provider, you want your potential patients to know at a glance which types of services you provide. If a reader doesn’t know within a few seconds whether you are the type of doctor needed, he or she will look elsewhere.

9. Asking for TMI. With few exceptions, the content on your site should be able to be read by anyone. Don’t require registration in order to access your blog or other areas of the website. Having a patient-only section is fine, but only if you have a reason to do so.

10. No Call to Action. What do you want your readers to do? Call to make an appointment? Fill out a contact form? Click here to read a news article on a common medical issue? Sign up for your blog’s RSS feed? If you don’t have a clear call to action, your patients probably won’t do it.

800-258-0702

healthcaremarketinggroup.com

Page 4: Top 20 Medical Website Design Mistakes

11. Ads on Your Site. There is no place for Adsense, affiliate marketing or other advertisements on the vast majority of medical websites, so don’t try to sneak them in.

12. Being Behind the Times. If you do not have a mobile-friendly version of your site, then you are not catering to the 2015 crowd, who are often surfing the web on their smartphones. Additionally, Google’s latest algorithm has made it so sites will lose ranking if they are not mobile friendly.

13. Unclear Links. Make it obvious where each link is going to take your potential patients. Also, be sure that previously clicked links are a different color than those that haven’t been visited yet.

14. Text Masquerading as Links. Similarly, don’t underline text. Your readers will try to click on it, and when nothing happens, they might think that you have a broken link.

15. Horizontal Scrolling. This just makes your page look unwieldy and overwhelming (not to mention inconvenient to use), so don’t even consider making your site’s pages too wide to be seen in their entirety on the screen. (Vertical scrolling is fine, but don’t go overboard.)

800-258-0702

healthcaremarketinggroup.com

Page 5: Top 20 Medical Website Design Mistakes

16. Non-Updated Blogs. It’s great to have a blog on your medical website. What isn’t so great is to have the last entry dated in 2012. Either remove the dates or come up with a reasonable editorial calendar.

17. Bad Images. Don’t take copyrighted images from other sources. Use your own high-quality originals or go for stock photos that are legal for you to put on a commercial website. Once you do choose images, make sure that they’re not too small.

18. Broken Links. Check every one of your links to make sure that it’s going where it’s supposed to be going. If you are linking to outside pages, check regularly that they’re still up and running.

19. Links Opening New Windows. If your potential patient clicks on a link, he or she knows what to do in order to open it in a new tab or window. Even if he chooses to open the link in the same tab, the “back” button will get him back to your site.

20. Failure to Market. The best medical website in the world is not going to do you any good if no one knows about it. Link it to your social media, invest in some PPC ads, work on other types of digital marketing and include the link on your business cards to get potential patients to your site and into your office!

800-258-0702

healthcaremarketinggroup.com

Page 6: Top 20 Medical Website Design Mistakes

HealthCare Marketing Group is ready to get your medical website design to where

it needs to be to bring in more patients and make you more money. Our web

development experts know how to avoid common pitfalls and boost your site

ahead of those of your competition.

800-258-0702

healthcaremarketinggroup.com

Give us a call today at 800-258-0702 to schedule your free web audit and competitors’ analysis.